humanity's ten great challenges and how we can overcome them

Julian Cribb is a Canberra author and science communicator. Surviving the 21st Century is his ninth book. Following The Coming Famine (2010) and Poisoned Planet (2014), it is the third in his trilogy about how humans can overcome the existential threats our success has brought upon us.

The Victoria and Tasmania branch will be making our presence felt during Victoria's Sustainable Living Festival this month. During the Big Weekend 10 - 12 of February, we will be having a stall near Federation Square Melbourne. Volunteer branch members will be actively engaging with the wider public on population sustainability and its relation to environmental issues.

On August 23 Michael Bayliss (President, VicTas Branch) was invited to speak to the national Safe Cities conference on the topic: 'The Impact on Rapid Population Growth in Urban Centres'. Michael used Melbourne and other Australian cities as case examples as to how rapidly growing cities affect public safety through bad building design, health sector infrastructure, psychology and well-being, and long term environmental viability.

Environment group, Sustainable Population Australia (SPA), is mourning the death of Dr Doug Cocks who died in Canberra earlier this week.

Dr Cocks wrote the 1996 book People Policy – Australia’s population choices following a frustrating period as adviser to the 1994 federal parliamentary committee examining population policy chaired by Hon Barry Jones MP.

SPA national president, Ms Sandra Kanck, says Cocks’ book was an antidote to the Jones Inquiry which managed to avoid making any recommendations on what Australia’s population-immigration policy should be.

Every day we hear politicians, economists and media commentators
telling us how important it is to grow our economy and that the faster
it grows, the better off we are all going to be. But how credible is
this plan for perpetual growth, considering that many of the resources
we use are finite in nature?
Have we all been brainwashed into thinking that more and more growth
is the answer to all our problems?
Could it be that the myopic pursuit of growth at all costs now is the problem?

This public forum may raise more questions than it answers so come
along with your thinking caps on as we try to trim away some long-held
assumptions and get to the truth about the ideology of growth and
where it's taking us.

In June 2016, the High Level Champions for Climate Action, appointed by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, requested submissions on their Roadmap for Cimate Action following the Paris climate agreement. SPA's submission explains how greater support for voluntary family planning in high fertility countries is critical for achieving a "safe" climate limited to 1.5-2oC. Emissions projection scenarios which achieve sufficient emissions reductions all assume much lower global population growth than the UN's current projection.